


tired and hungry and totally useless in this department

by haemophilus



Series: Transcendental Youth [2]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Arson, Gen, Gen Work, General 20-Something Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-04-18
Packaged: 2018-10-20 14:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10664358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haemophilus/pseuds/haemophilus
Summary: Mac is 20 years old, broke as shit, and has just lost yet another low-wage clerk job out of general incompetence. After seeing a report on the news about setting buildings on fire and looting them to make money, he decides to try it out for himself.





	tired and hungry and totally useless in this department

**Author's Note:**

> CW for alcohol abuse, vomiting, general twenty-something ennui, and arson.
> 
> Title from "Let's Get Fucked Up and Die" by Motion City Soundtrack.

Being fired from his fifth low-wage clerk job in two years wasn’t the only reason Mac was day-drinking that afternoon, but it sure didn’t help. He tipped back his sixth beer and idly clicked the remote to change the television channel as a badass predator show on Animal Planet turned into a stupid show about pigs. The idea that weak pigs were fit to share airspace with lions and bears who actually put effort into being goddamn winners in life just showed what was wrong with the world these days. Everyone’s priorities were way out of order.

Mac opened a seventh can of beer and chugged most of it. Fuck Discount Liquor. A liquor store that hired someone who was never plastered at work was doing hiring wrong. After a painful burp, Mac chugged the rest. Then, he threw the empty cans of both beer six and beer seven across the room in the general direction of all the other beer cans he hadn’t bothered to toss out. All those liberal blowhards were always talking about recycling being good for the earth well – one man’s trash was another man’s living room décor.

He flicked through channel after channel of garbage – stupid family sitcoms, movies with all the fun words and tits blurred out, documentaries about World War II – until finally he looped around to the six-o-clock news. Mac looked at the near empty case of beer resting by his feet. He had only started drinking at four-thirty. Any self-reflection about that moment at all was aborted by the stunning shots of a burning building that the newscasters were projecting onscreen.

“Police have apprehended two suspects with charges of second-degree arson and vandalism of a condemned building,” said the newscaster. “They suspect this is another example of a new trend of vandalism among young people called ‘fire-stripping’ in which abandoned buildings are lit on fire and then stripped for anything worthwhile that is left over once the building is unusable. After the break, we’ll tell you why you need to have a talk with your kids about matches.”

The video of the burning building left the screen, and Mac turned off the television.

He needed to call Charlie.

***

“What do you mean no?” asked Mac into his shitty landline phone. Considering that pieces of it were broken off and its cord was about four inches long, it was very possible that Mac had misheard what Charlie had said.

“I mean it sounds like the dumbest idea you’ve ever had dude,” said Charlie. “You see a crime on the news where people got caught, and you want me to go do it now? No.”

An unmistakable crunch emanated from Charlie’s end of the conversation.

“Dude are you eating something right now?” asked Mac.

“Yeah, dude. I’m hungry. I’m not gonna stop eating just because you called me with an idea,” said Charlie. He took another bite, and Mac rolled his eyes.

“Whatever. Listen. Think of what this could do for us, Charlie. I’m sure some people are making a billion bucks off of this scam! You could move out of your mom’s house.”

“I could move out of my mom’s house whenever,” said Charlie. “I just like that she does my laundry.”

The crunching continued. “What are you eating?” asked Mac.

“Well, like, my mom decided today that all of the dandelions in our yard needed to be removed so that I didn't die. But I didn't want them to go to waste, so –”

“Oh my god,” groaned Mac. “You’re judging me for my ideas while you sit there and eat dandelions?”

“Oh, I'm sorry. 'I'm Mac and I'm too good to eat dandelions!'” yelled Charlie.

“I’m hanging up!” yelled Mac. He slammed the phone down onto the receiver. Its short cord wiggled pathetically in response.

Fine. He’d do it all by himself.

***

Mac stopped by a liquor store the next afternoon to buy vodka and cigarettes for sneaky ignition. He had cryptic conversations with his favorite pawn shop that confirmed anything he salvaged would sell. Choosing a vacant lot was easy; half of everything in his neighborhood was already abandoned. He decided upon an old store that had been closed for about a year. New enough for valuable parts, but not new enough to arouse suspicion. He got dressed in his darkest clothes and waited for night to fall with bated breath. A whole sixer kept him company as darkness closed around the city of Philadelphia.

Around ten-o-clock, Mac finally left his apartment. With no car, he was forced to walk to his location. In order to hide his tools of arson, he had poured the alcohol in an old gallon milk jug and had shoved it and the cigarettes in a plastic Wawa bag. It tugged at his forearm muscles uncomfortably as he walked. He made a mental note to add more arm reps to his workout routine after tonight. In the meantime, he experimented with moving the bag from one hand to the other and doing miniature reps with it on each arm. By the time he got to the condemned building, he could already feel that those muscles had grown. Sweet.

Under the guise of nightfall, the building looked much more intimidating than it did when Mac passed by it on the street during the day. Stupid teenagers had busted up all the windows with rocks over the past year, and the door’s hinges were completely broken off. Various gang signs and personal tags were sprayed all over the building. He recognized some of them – neighbors, former classmates, former coworkers, buyers, and his dad’s friends’ gangs. However, it was all posturing. Mac’s neighborhood held no strategic importance in turf wars and half of the residents had lost their jobs due to a few franchises killing off mom and pop shops. A bunch of people either lost their apartments entirely or were living on welfare now. Some of them were addicted to booze and crack; most of them were still trying to be ‘respectable’ and to look for jobs. In a year, maybe, turf wars over drugs would become a problem. Now, however –

Wind whooshed through the building and caused it to rattle. Several mice scurried out of the building, and a pigeon flew out the window. Mac took a deep breath, and headed inside.

The inside of the building smelled damp and made Mac’s nose itch. He looked up and saw several colors of mold growing on the off-white ceiling and snaking down the walls. The lightbulbs on the ceiling were all smashed in, clearly again by dumb kids breaking shit for fun. Mac rested his bag on the floor, and scoped out his surroundings. The floor on the first level was stone, and clearly wouldn’t burn very well (though could possibly be salvageable later). A basement with a wooden door was off to the left; he picked up his bag and headed in that direction.

Inside the basement was a jackpot – old trash and wrecked furniture were littered everywhere. The floor was hardwood and there were wooden shelves on the walls. If this room ignited, the entire building would surely go up in flames. Mac grinned and took out his gallon of vodka. He enthusiastically tossed it onto the floor in a corner of the room away from the stairs, and then backed up away from it so as not to get his feet wet. His heart was pounding; this was almost too easy. Mac pulled out a cigarette, and lit it – a great way to make it look like an accident. Then, he tossed the lit cigarette into his puddle of alcohol.

The cigarette burned for about five seconds before becoming engulfed in the puddle and going out. Mac frowned. He lit another cigarette, blew into it to make the end hotter, and threw it in. Again, nothing happened.

Mac went up to the alcohol with his lighter, tentative now. He had seen in movies that cigarettes were supposed to ignite alcohol instantly, yet it had done absolutely nothing. His heart was pounding at the knowledge that he truly had no clue of what would happen if he held up his lighter to the vodka. However, the thought of his potential riches grabbed him once more, so he crouched down and tried to light it again.

Nothing! Mac threw the lighter across the room, and it shattered into pieces. So much for his plan. He kicked a nearby couch as hard as he could out of frustration, ran out of the basement, slammed the door behind him, and then ran out of the building entirely. Then he kicked the building too for good measure.

“Stupid goddamn building!” he shouted as he kicked the wall with another sweet roundhouse kick that managed to hurt his foot and not the wall at all. “What the fuck are you even good for?”

“Shut up!” yelled someone from an apartment complex nearby.

“Fuck off!” yelled Mac.

“I’ll call the cops you goddamn delinquent!” the person shouted.

“Go ahead! I don’t give a shit!” yelled Mac. Then, he fled the scene of the crime as fast as his legs would carry him.

That night, he drank himself into a stupor and dreamed about burning the entire city to the ground. He woke up in a pool of his own vomit.

So much for dreams.


End file.
